TimesJobs recently hosted an 'Industry-Academia Connect 2016: Building the Workforce of Future' in association with Sri Manakula Vinayagar Engineering College in Chennai

TimesJobs.com Bureau

Skilling of entry-level talent and up-skilling of existing workforce has been the biggest challenge faced by industry and academia. While skill requirements are changing at lightening speed, it has become crucial for industry and academia to stay connected keeping a 360-degree view. Their effective collaboration and integration is the key to this unsolved talent conundrum.

To explore this more, TimesJobs recently hosted an 'Industry-Academia Connect 2016: Building the Workforce of Future' in association with Sri Manakula Vinayagar Engineering College in Chennai.

Initiating the discussion, Kumar of Verizon said the kind of skills companies are looking for are different from what colleges syllabus offers. How do they keep pace with changing technology? What elements of technology/languages will be useful for organisations? Stability is a factor as students mostly run away from an organisation in two years.

Where does the industry-academia relationship stand? Highlighting the gap, Sen of KLA Tencor said that what industry is really looking at is people with practical knowledge, not just theoretical understanding. "And practical knowledge comes from projects and internships that students built during college. But large numbers of colleges are still focusing only on classroom-based learning which is not scalable when students come on-board."

So, certainly there is a huge gap between industry expectations and student quality.

Sharing the best practices from his company, Xavier of Technosoft Global said, "In our partner institutes, we set the expectations in institutes in terms of the team, niche skill sets required, and training required. So students get a year's training and when they come on board, our requirements are met."

While there are collaborations happening between industry and academia, is it happening on a large scale across sectors?

Answering this question, Chidambaram of Tech Mahindra said, "Industry-academia collaborations are happening in non-IT sectors too. In IT, time to market is a critical factor. More than skills, we look for right attitude in our associates (entry-level talent). The candidate should have the attitude to learn, upgrade themselves and pick up tech advancements."

"At Tech Mahindra, we train them to transform their skills in bargain associates feel they are not outdated. We also follow a strict job rotation policy so people can acquire knowledge of new domains," he said.

Speaking on hiring for niche industry such as healthcare-BPO, Parikh of Ajuba Solutions said they preferred to recruit from colleges but the hiring pivot is culture. If they are able to fit in, they stay longer.

"Our priority is CAP in candidates, which stands for communication, attitude for learning and passion for work. To be able to hire quality student, we have to invest in training to move them to the shop floor."

Transitioning a new hire in the corporate world has been a challenge for HR. On this, Nair of Schneider Electric said that to hire right, they have moved a step back and created a connection with institutes. "We have a strategic alliance team to see which institutes we should partner with for various roles. We consciously support these institutes in faculty management to understand skills requirement of the organisation."

Sharing his view, Kumar of FSS said, "While hiring from campus, we look for fundamentals aptitude, attitude and good understanding of subjects. Communication is not too critical for us as employees learn it easily on the job. But to bridge the gap between industry and academia, colleges have to relook at the kind of faculty they hire."

Adding the academia perspective on training faculty and designing industry-ready curriculum, M. Dhanasekaran of SMVEC said that to make their students industry ready, they provide specialised trainings relevant to industry requirements. They have also framed special curriculum to train students based on the requirements they receive from recruiters visiting the college. "If industry leaders can teach students once a month, we will get closer to filling the gap."